Come in & Take a Browse

Menu

The Extra Allowances, Stuffed into My Pockets

Memories from the childhood years here, translated…

When I was young, we were, quite poor, the family of four relied on the measly wages my father earned as a government office worker. But, as we grew older, my younger sister and I would, from time to time, want to buy something extra, but my mother, who’d nickeled and dimed everything refused to allow us to pick out what we wanted, said she could get us what we wanted.

saving money IS an important value to instill in the young…

My mother was strictly against giving us kids any allowances, and she has a very far-fetched view of what’s aesthetic compared to us. Remembered how as my lunch bag cracked open in middle school, I’d seen one that I’d wanted from a stationery shop, I’d begged my mother for it, not only did I get turned down, after we got home, she’d, dug up an ugly as hell bag, with the unit my father worked with printed on it, wanted me to use that gray, dirty bag to carry my lunch in. I’d felt taken at that very moment, and ran into the bedroom, and cried to my younger sister about it.

My father who bore witness to all of this, but, being quiet, he’d never said a word to me about it. The very next day, as I got up for school, as I was putting on my uniform, I’d found two folded hundred dollar bills insde my shirt pocket, with a note clipped to it, “This is the allowances for you and your sister, each of you will receive a hundred dollars every month, don’t waste it away, dad.”

Up until we graduated high school, on the very first day of each and every month, I’d always found that love my father had for me, unspoken, clipped away, inside of my uniform pockets, and that small note he’d written, I’d saved, to this very day, it’d become, a little secret my father and I shared through the years.

“don’t waste it away now!!!”

So, this, is the love of a father, giving his daughter everything he could, and, in those times, when money was scarce, you can understand why the mother would refuse to allow the daughter buy the things she’d wanted to buy, but, her father saw how much she’d wanted it, and so, he’d started, giving her allowances, so she could save up the money by herself, to buy what she wanted, and by this way, the young woman would learn that money wasn’t easy to come by, and that maybe, after she’d saved enough to buy whatever she’d wanted to buy in the first place, she would find something else more important that she’d wanted to own, and, save more money, to buy that other item.